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Durham bridge to close as scaffolding comes down

11:06am Thursday 5th January 2012 in Durham Photograph of the Author By Mark Tallentire

AN HISTORIC bridge will be seen free from scaffolding for the first time in over a year within weeks, it has been announced.

When scaffolding went up around the 200-year-old Prebends Bridge, over the River Wear in Durham City, last February, the structure was expected to reopen after just three weeks.

However, a survey found major water erosion – casting doubt over its future – and it has been closed to vehicles ever since.

Urgent repairs have been carried out and talks are being held over a full £5m restoration project.

Now bosses at Durham Cathedral, which owns the 1776-built scheduled ancient monument, have said the scaffolding will come down over six weeks from Monday.

During this work, the bridge will be closed to pedestrians and vehicles.

Afterwards, it will reopen to pedestrians and emergency vehicles.

Bob Matthews, Durham Cathedral’s clerk of works, said: "Prebends Bridge is a much-loved landmark in the city and I am looking forward to being able to admire it again without the scaffolding in place.

"We are obviously delighted to have been able to undertake this temporary repair of the bridge but I look forward to the day when its long-term future is secured."

The urgent repairs, paid for by Durham County Council, English Heritage and the Friends of Durham Cathedral, saw the bridge injected with a silicone grout compound to stabilise its masonry.

Carol Pyrah, English Heritage’s planning director for the North-East, said: "We are pleased to have grant aided the repairs to this important historic bridge and will be working with Durham Cathedral and Durham County Council to look at how we can secure the long-term future of the bridge and take it off our Heritage at Risk register."

Councillor Neil Foster, the council’s cabinet member for regeneration and economic development, said: "We are delighted to have been able to contribute towards safeguarding this important historic structure for the foreseeable future."

The River Wear will remain open as the scaffolding is removed but river traffic will be restricted to one or two arches at various times.

Comments(3)

Nicholas_Till says...
6:52pm Thu 5 Jan 12

I seem to remember someone posting under a relevant article fairly recently info or hearsay to the effect that the real trouble with the bridge was that it had had the bejasus pounded out of it by vans etc. going over it while Saddler Street was being dug up, denying them other access to the Peninsula, but that some more forgiveable cause of deterioration - here, long-term water erosion - had to be cited instead in the media releases, whether it was true or not, so as not to impress on Dunelmians to a quite immoderate extent how reliably the visionaries could mash up their city and squander huge amounts of money doing this, or whatever else they do with it.

My apologies in advance to anyone who may have diagnosed the problems of the bridge in good faith, as being the publicised ones of water erosion. This isn't about him / her.

But I wonder what the truth is.

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Nicholas_Till says...
4:38pm Fri 6 Jan 12

Ah - the post I referred to above was in The Observer of Sunday 20 November 2011, in the wake of Lumiere and its publicity. Under an article by Rachel Cooke ("Lumiere 2011 - Review"), poster drmirabilisisamuppet wrote among other things the following, quoted verbatim:

"Furthermore, the 5.5 million that was wasted on this joke of a regeneration perpetrated by an unwholesome quango (Durham Vision part of the joke that is 1 North East) could have been better spent on repairing the 18th C Prebends Bridge that has suiffered severe vibration damage as a result of allowing non-stop vehicular traffic for a number of months to allow access to the Bailey while the Market Place was being ruined (the "story" about water egress from the east side being an almost total red herring)..."

The link to this particular article and its thread is as follows:

http://www.guardian.
co.uk/artanddesign/2
011/nov/20/durham-lu
miere-2011-review?IN
TCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

So, someone has indeed entertained the notion that mismanagement by the regeneration bodies and resultant vehicle vibration have actually been the major cause of damage to Prebends Bridge.

I wouldn't know if he's right, or right up to a point, or wrong concerning this.

But there are probably people out there who *do* know.

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ceddesfeld says...
8:08pm Fri 6 Jan 12

Durham County Council has form when it comes to dubious engineering issues -viz the various tales told about the structural condition of Stanhope Ford, whereas anyone crossing on foot can see that it looks just as it always did - when dogma and inconvenient fact collide, only one wins....

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